[PATCH v2 1/6] Add some gcc/ld optimizations and magic

[David Herrmann]

Hi

On Mon, Sep 2, 2013 at 11:38 PM, Peter Hutterer
<peter.hutterer at who-t.net> wrote:
> On Sun, Sep 01, 2013 at 05:45:04PM +0200, David Herrmann wrote:
>> There are several gcc/ld flags that optimize size and performance without
>> requiring explicit code changes. In no particular order, this adds:
>>  - gcc -pipe to avoid temporary files and use pipes during compilation
>>  - gcc -fno-common avoids putting uninitialized global variables not
>>    marked as "extern" into a common section. This catches compilation
>>    errors if we didn't mark global variables explicitly as "extern".
>>  - gcc -fno-strict-aliasing allows us to use unions for some binary magic.
>>    Otherwise, -O2 might assume that two different types never point at the
>>    same memory. We currently don't rely on this but it's common practice
>>    so avoid any non-obvious runtime errors later.
>>  - gcc -ffunction-sections and -fdata-sections put each function and
>>    variable into a separate section. This enables ld's --gc-sections to
>>    drop any unused sections (sections which aren't referenced from an
>>    exported section). This is very useful to avoid putting dead code into
>>    DSOs. We can now link any helper function into libevdev and the linker
>>    removes all of them if they're unused.
>>  - gcc -fstack-protector adds small stack-corruption protectors in
>>    functions which have big buffers on the stack (>8bytes). If the
>>    stack-protectors are corrupted, the process is aborted. This is highly
>>    useful to debug stack-corruption issues which often are nearly
>>    impossible to catch without this.
>>  - ld --as-needed drops all linked libraries that are not actually
>>    required by libevdev. So we can link to whatever we want and the linker
>>    will drop everything which is not actually used.
>>  - ld -z now, resolve symbols during linking, not during runtime.
>>  - ld -z relro, add relocation-read-only section. This allows to put
>>    read-only global variables and alike into a read-only section. This is
>>    useful for variables that need a relocation and thus cannot be
>>    explicitly put into a read-only section. This option tells the linker
>>    to mark them read-only after relocations are done. (that's why -z now
>>    makes sense in combination with this)
>>
>> All of these options are common in other open-source projects, including
>> systemd and weston. Don't ask me why they are not marked as default..
>>
>> Signed-off-by: David Herrmann <dh.herrmann at gmail.com>
>> ---
>
> oh, whoops. I thought I had merged that from the previous patchset. sorry.
>
> merged 1/6 and 2/6. I'll skip the others, because I think I dislike the
> single makefile approach as much as you like it :)

Hehe, ok.

> thanks.
>
> oh, and please run
>   git config --add format.subjectprefix "PATCH `basename $PWD`"
> in your libevdev tree :)

Whoops, I forgot that in my previous patches. Done, thx.

Regards
David